Efficient document creation and editing is at the core of modern productivity. Every year, users produce hundreds of billions of electronic documents: papers, reports, proposals, letters, notes, memos, spreadsheets, completed forms and other types of documents, additionally, billions of hard copies of documents are printed and converted back into digital formats. Productivity software serves as the main tool in document authoring. By some forecasts, the number of business users of software productivity suites will grow from 630 million back in 2013 to 1.2 billion users by 2022.
A key component of most productivity suites is a word processor—a writing application for creating different types of documents. Most word processors are predominantly text based but are capable of including enhanced formats of textual data, such as bulleted and numbered lists, tables, indexes, references, footnotes, etc., as well as other data types, including images and business graphics. The existing worldwide market of desktop word processors is dominated by Microsoft Word®. According to company estimates, Microsoft Word is used by more than a half of billion people worldwide, compared with approximately 750 million users of all Microsoft Office products.
Other market studies put Microsoft Word's worldwide market share above 70%, while in top three countries by population (China, India and United States) it ranges from 68% to 88%. The next most popular office suite, OpenOffice, scores around 11% of the worldwide market share, with Apple iWork, Corel WordPerfect and Google Docs accounting for single digit percentages.
Through almost 40 years since the release of the first WYSYSIG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) word processor, a Xerox PARC Bravo document preparation program, document editing software has developed extensive and sophisticated feature sets for input, manipulation, formatting, and output of documents, which may contain text, item lists, tables, embedded graphics, forms and other templates, references, and many more object types. Thus, a feature band (or similar), normally appearing on top of the application window in recent versions of Microsoft Word, includes a dozen or so tabs, each offering numerous feature buttons and menus. For example, a Home tab of the feature band in some versions of Microsoft Word is subdivided into Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing sections, each containing many subordinate feature groups and basic features, such as font properties, paragraph alignment, bullet types and line space parameters, custom styles, etc. Similar extensive feature sets are characteristic for other popular word processors.
Contemporary word processors are built and evolving with the purpose of rich document editing and are aimed at creation of presentable high quality documents, helping many categories of office and home users in their everyday document authoring needs. However, this evolution is simultaneously creating a conflict and growing a gap between the extensive feature sets and the requirements of a modern dynamic and mobile lifestyle. A need exists for quick and undistracted creation, compilation and sharing of information between multiple desktop and mobile devices for a broad variety of documents types, from brief memos and snapshots of ideas to meeting notes, design drafts and annotated snippets of clipped and compiled materials. Creation of the documents should emphasize focus on the content over its presentable formatting and value simplicity of user interface over a rich feature set. Traditional software applications that occupy a significant portion of screen with user interface options for document authoring features are often inefficient and distractive, and so is a cluttered multi-window desktop layout, customarily overloaded by multiple windows of potentially unrelated applications.
WYSIWYG document processing may include three modes with different document display capabilities: a composition mode, a layout mode, and a preview mode. In most word processors, switching between modes is purely manual, and users are not allowed to use, for example, a preview mode for editing the document as close to a final printable or displayable view as possible.
Challenges facing a conventional word processing user interface and workflow have stimulated an increased use of simplified text entry applications, such as notepads on various platforms and diverse versions of the Markdown application where plain text entry is accompanied by mnemonic inline formatting primitives. While these applications are making a step in the right direction, they don't solve the problem of focusing a user on writing and uncluttering a desktop environment. They also rely on a user's ability to memorize and efficiently use formatting primitives, which arguably narrows the audience.
Accordingly, it is desirable to design new systems, processes and methods facilitating writing process and document composition.